| History: | Montgomery County Bills of Sales. Vol 1: November 26, 1896, 100.
Collins, Patterson, & Co. (I. A. Collins, W. P. Terrell, I. H. Collins, C. M. Osborn) had a sawmill in 1888 at Brantley (later Kelly's Switch). The Bills of Sale revealed the assets: a complete sawmill with a steam engine and boiler, an edger, a blacksmith shop, oxen and wagons, a tram locomotive, log cars, and tram road on the Montgomery branch of the GCSFRR.
Zlatkovich reports that a Lake Creek shortline existed from 1885 to 1895, from Montgomery to Hawthicket, with a little more than thirteen miles of tracks. Reed states that The Lake Creek Lumber Company was a tram logging road of eight miles length, about eight miles in length. The Railroad Commission of Texas recognized its common carrier status in 1891 but reversed its position in 1896.
In fact, The Lake Creek Railroad Company was the property of a number of lumber companies. Lake Creek Lumber Company bought out Montgomery & Company, I. H. Collins and H. J. Montgomery), on October 20, 1888, for $105 worth in horses and mules and eighteen promissory notes totaling $3,170, the notes payable at $7,000. The inventory included a sawmill steam engine (12x20”) with two boilers, two lumber trucks, several buildings on the the Egypt & Montgomery Railroad, six yokes of oxen, two log wagons, $1200 worth of commissary goods, and a commissary. These facts reveal that Montgomery & Company had been logging without locomotives on a company tram road, which was probably titled the Montgomery & Egypt. The only mention of this tramroad is in the Montgomery County Deed Records dealing with these companies and their series of transactions between 1888 and 1893.
On January 14, 1891, M. Wallace and M. C. Wren (the only heir of J. H. Smith, deceased) joined by her husband, R. H. Wren, sold their interests in Lake Creek Lumber Company to Edward N. Oualline, a noted Montgomery County sawmiller, for $5,000 ($1500 in real estate in Groveton and $3500 in secured promissory notes dated March 1, 1891). The assets sold included the sawmill and engine, boiler machinery, three lumber trucks, all slab trucks, one Shay locomotive, five log cars, the iron and wood tram track used as a tram road, all buildings to the east of the Egypt & Montgomery Railroad, sixteen yokes of oxen, two mules, three log wagons, and three log carts.
By 1893, Oualline had taken a partner by the name of Decker. Oualline and Decker contracted with T. M. Richardson Lumber Company of Oklahoma City, Indian Territory, to ship its entire lumber output to Richardson for one year at $7 per 1,000 feet of 1'x12' lumber. Oualline & Company soon disappear at this location from local records.
Obviously The Lake Creek Railroad Company was a very small tram operation operating over a short length of tracks. It disappears about the same time as does the Oualline lumber operation.
In June 1891 the railroad, with two narrow gauge locomotives, twenty flat cars, and eight miles of track, was owned by the Montgomery Mill & Lumber Company. |